It’s 1915, and Catherine, a young aristocrat, cedes to her late husband’s wish that their estate be used as a military hospital. Her trauma is mirrored in the destroyed features of the soldiers shipped from the front. For this hospital is treating those with facial injuries so horrific that the infant discipline of plastic surgery cannot cope, and chief surgeon Dr McCleary resorts to ancient Indian texts for inspiration. They are joined by Kazanjian, a dentist who splints shattered jaws with putty and wire, and Anna Coleman, an artist who draws portraits of the patients as a medical aid and a prelude to their rehabilitation. The widow becomes Anna’s awkward assistant; their first subject, a fair-haired cartographer, who Catherine falls for because he reminds her of her dead husband. And when McCleary proposes a radical reconstruction, certain possibilities tempt her.
Fragmented, impressionistic scenes build a picture of the hospital, and the sensual writing suffuses the book with a dreamy appreciation of colour and detail. Sometimes, however, the short sentences collapse under their own weight, overburdened by adjectives. It’s a novel preoccupied with change – Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’ crops up more than once – but the narrative dallies without knowing quite where it’s heading. It’s strongest, in fact, when evoking the still of night, in which Kazanjian and McCleary sip wine and search for meaning in the human detritus of war that surrounds them.
